Sheezus

Lily Allen possesses a terrific flair for irony, but there's a fine line between using irony to make a cutting point and using it as a protective coating to hide the fact that you're not sure exactly what you're trying to say. She was once a master of the former, but her new album, Sheezus, is another story.

A few weeks ago, Lily Allen released a single called "Sheezus", from her new album of the same name. She begins the song in a weary murmur, announcing that, after five years away, she's ready to step back into the spotlight and endure all the "embarrassing" comparisons she will receive to other female pop stars. Then, in the chorus, she all but invites these comparisons by name-checking some artists she seems to perceive as her contemporaries: "Riri isn't scared of Katy Perry's Roaring/ Queen B's gone back to the drawing/ Lorde smells blood, yeah she's about to slay you/ Kid ain't one to fuck with when she's only on her debut."

"Sheezus" is a maddeningly catchy, deeply puzzling song. Is she paying homage to these women? Is she making fun of them? Maybe a little bit of both? (And while we're asking the unanswerable: Why is she dressed like a Na'vi from Avatar in the song's video?) Maybe Allen wants "Sheezus" to be read as a critique of the ruthlessly combative, Who-Wore-It-Better? pageant that our culture creates for female celebrities—though at the same time, she admits that part of her desires that rigged game's flashy prize. "Give me the crown, bitch," she snaps a little too convincingly at the end of the chorus, "I wanna be Sheezus."

All things considered, the Lorde reference is particularly loaded. Nearly a decade ago, Allen was the promising and precociously literate pop insurgent who was "only on her debut." That record was 2006's enduringly charming *Alright, Still—*a personable blast of witty, hip-hop-informed pop that featured lively character sketches of famous family members, eccentric London townies, and shitty ex-boyfriends. It sold millions and made her a star, particularly in her home country. Allen became a fixture on the London club scene and an acid-tongued presence in the British media; she took a brief and well-publicized break from drinking after telling Elton John to "fuck off" on national TV.

Her second record, It's Not Me, It's You, was as shimmery and sharp as a shattered mirror, critiquing the vapidity of fame ("The Fear") and the ways in which the deck is stacked against outspoken women who dare to outlive their ingénue phase ("22", a song about the Rock-Forever-21-But-Just-Turned-30 set, now feels like a bleak sequel to Taylor Swift's hit of the same name). Though the tabloids charted Allen's every affair, her most passionate love/hate relationship seemed to be with her own notoriety. (A telling detail that almost every profile of her dutifully noted: After she was arrested in 2007 for attacking a photographer, she blew up a copy of the police citation and hung it in her foyer.)

Clearly, Allen possesses a terrific flair for irony. But there's a fine line between using irony to make a cutting point and using it as a protective coating to hide the fact that you're not sure exactly what you're trying to say. Allen was once a master of the former, but Sheezus too often finds her drifting perilously in the latter territory. Even before she was disowning her underperforming singles as "docile pop rubbish" on Twitter a few weeks ago, we got a taste of this back-pedaling and double-speak on the album’s lead-off single "Hard Out Here", which fashioned itself a critique of music industry sexism but, to some listeners, sent an unfortunate mixed message. "I don't have to shake my ass for you, cuz I've got a brain," Allen sang, as though the two were mutually exclusive; behind her, a group of black women shook their asses at the camera. When the video was accused of being racist, Allen clarified, "If I could dance like the ladies can, it would have been my arse on your screens." All of this confusion only muddled her original point, and made you wonder if the song had as much brain power as Allen advertised.

Allen was one of the first high-profile artists to cultivate a fanbase via the internet; she posted demos on Myspace in advance of Alright, Still, and later became known for writing confessional posts on her blog. But the controversy that "Hard Out Here" generated seemed like a barometer of how much the internet has changed in a few short years—especially when it comes to talking (or making music) about feminism. As the writer Michelle Goldberg described in a recent cover story for The Nation, it can sometimes feel on Twitter like there is a radical SWAT team that would rather jump on anyone who Does Feminism Wrong (see also: the "Is Beyoncé A Feminist?" Thinkpiece Fatigue of 2014) than allow people to express "well intentioned" but "imperfect" opinions. Because she is making some valid points about double standards in the music industry, some might find it tempting to consider Allen a victim of this kind of hand-wringing. But in the end, Sheezus fails on much less ambiguous grounds.

There's nothing particularly wrong with the way the album sounds: It's a sleek and bubbly, if somewhat indistinct, pop record. It's not easy to write songs that are as catchy as they are verbose, but Allen and her frequent collaborator, producer Greg Kurstin, have not lost the light, agile touch they showcased on the best of It's Not Me. "L8 CMMR" is cheeky summertime pop, and the Sugababes-sweet "Air Balloon" is infectious enough that I can almost forgive Allen, lyrically, for making the same joke as that stupid Bavaria Radler commercial with Elvis and Kurt Cobain. (Almost.) The record's most satisfyingly on-point moment, though, is "URL Badman", a satirical send-up of spiteful internet commenters. Allen sings it in the voice of a parents'-basement-dwelling "London white boy repping ATL" who says things like, "I don't troll, I make statements." Even though he spends his days spouting Wordpress vitriol at famous women who will never fuck him, he wants us to know that deep down he's really just a sensitive guy, "like Drake."

If only this record could put its money where its delightfully dirty mouth is. But too often, there's a tone of scolding, mean-spirited superiority about Sheezus that, after a few spins, makes you wonder why Allen thinks she’s so different from that blogosphere hater. The feather-light R&B number "Insincerely Yours" is bogged down by cheap shots and Twitter-beef petulance: "I don't give a fuck about the Delevingne, that Rita girl, about Jourdan Dunn… I don't give a fuck about your Instagram, about your lovely house or your ugly kids." Allen's venomous tongue was previously effective when it spewed at unidentified love interests or impersonal cultural institutions like "society" or The Sun and The Mirror, but, as on “Sheezus”, she runs into trouble as soon as she starts naming names. Not only will “Insincerely Yours” age about as well as the Fred Durst diss in "The Real Slim Shady", but less forgivably, it contradicts the record’s overall message. How can Allen not see that she's playing into the very catfight narrative that, four songs previous, she was supposedly trying to end?

Even as Allen takes both serious and “ironic” jabs at her contemporaries, she seems plenty interested in borrowing from their sounds and sensibilities. “Our Time” is her obligatory stab at a YOLO-anthem, a “We Can’t Stop” in everything but name and cutting-edge production. There’s also a particularly noxious song called "Silver Spoon", the main argument of which scans as, “Fuck off, I grew up slightly less rich than you think I did.” Although it aims for empathy across class lines, it just comes off as defensive. Furthermore, although Allen’s records have always been stylistic hodgepodges, Sheezus doesn’t flow as fluidly as her last two. When things get a little weary after the mandatory ballad about not wanting to be famous anymore, cue "As Long As I Got You", which is...a zydeco song?

“The game is changing,” Allen sings on “Sheezus”. “Can’t just come back, jump on the mic and do the same thing.” There is something poignant and disarmingly honest about this song—very few artists pull back the curtain on the kind of fears and anxieties she’s acknowledging here. And while Allen’s right—the game is changing—there are plenty of reasons to feel more hopeful about the future than she does. Katy Perry’s “Roar” wasn’t a catty snipe at anybody’s Instagram, but instead a primal battle cry of female self-empowerment. Yes, Beyoncé did go back to the drawing board—and she returned to completely reinvent the album as a relevant format in 2014 and prove that brains and ass-shaking can coexist and the world shall continue to turn. And in the short amount of time she’s been on the scene, Lorde has not only spoken out against the music industry’s sexism but also cultivated a powerful sense of solidarity with other young female pop stars. Even in the context of a joke, the word “diva” feels applicable to her least of all. She is not the girl who wants to “slay” her “rivals”, but befriend and root for them instead.

So “Sheezus” is based on a false conceit. Nobody’s vying for the title of Top Diva in 2014 because—and this is the great and exciting thing about women in pop music right now—there’s enough room at the table for all different kinds of femininities, sexualities, races, body types, and sounds. (It ain’t perfect, of course, but progress is being made.) Sheezus has a few good points and some admirable intentions, but too often it misses the point. In the end, Allen only fans the flames she says she wants to extinguish.